Lenovo has an update to their popular Y470 laptop in the form of the IdeaPad Y470p. The “p” on the end indicates this is a high end configuration of the Y470 and a more capable gaming laptop. The big upgrade the Y470p sports is an AMD Radeon 7690m graphics card, the regular Y470 has an Nvidia 550m graphics card, which is inferior in performance. The full specs of the Lenovo Y470p now on sale for $799 on Lenovo.com are as follows:

Somewhat disappointing is the fact that Lenovo didn’t also upgrade the Y470p to a higher resolution 1600 x 900 screen, it’s still the same 1366 x 768 resolution screen that we griped about in our review of the Lenovo Y470. With that said, the lower resolution 1366 x 768 resolution screen means you’re going to get some pretty sweet gaming performance and frame rates with the AMD 7690 graphics. This is the same graphics card that’s in the new HP Envy 15-3000 that we reviewed. The Envy 15-3000 we reviewed had an Intel Core i7-2760QM processor, which is only 0.20 GHz faster than the Core i7-2670QM this IdeaPad Y470p has. So, for an idea of the benchmarks you’ll get on the Y470p take a look at how the Envy 15-3000 did with an HD and then for comparison SSD installed:

Since the IdeaPad Y470 can be easily upgraded to SSD using the mSATA port, you can quickly boost performance further by purchasing an Intel 310 mSATA SSD for $100 – $200 (80GB) depending on the capacity. Notice that the IdeaPad Y470 benchmarks in the above table features an mSATA SSD and that boosted the PCMark Vantage score to 12,160. The Envy 15-3000 when equipped with an SSD jumped up to a 15,835 score on PCMark Vantage! You can assume that the Lenovo Y470p with its AMD 7690M graphics and 2.20GHz Core i7 processor will score at least 15,000 if you put an mSATA SSD in – quite amazing for a 14” laptop that costs under $1,000.

Some may wonder if it’s worth waiting for the upcoming Intel Ivy Bridge processor equipped Lenovo Y480 that will be the replacement for the Y470. There’s no telling what graphics card the Y480 model will have, it may be a less desirable Nvidia card, and the release might not come until late May or early June so if you need something sooner than 4 – 5 months from now it’s not really worth waiting as you may end up being disappointed.

If you purchase the Y470p right now make sure to use coupon WKLYDEALSY470P at checkout as that knocks a cool $700 off the price for a final total of $799.